Efeitos de superfície e quiralidade nas estruturas em gotas de cristal líquido

Abstract

This work reviews the deformations in liquid crystal droplets and the behavior of topological defects that arise due to intrinsic characteristics of the material and the different conditions imposed on it by the surface. For this, simulations based on the chiral version of the GHRL potential (Gruhn, Hess, Romano, and Luckhurst) and the Monte Carlo method were used. The simulations developed by Biagio et al (2021) were used as a source to evaluate the efficiency of the Monte Carlo method in the convergence of the sample, from initially random systems. The focus of the work is to study the regimes of low (cholesteric) or no chirality (nematic). Therefore, part of the objective of this work is to understand the behavior of structures and defects in droplets, since these structures directly affect their optical properties. This model proved to be a good candidate for obtaining the equilibrium configurations with simulations in low-chirality systems. We present a fairly complete study of how different liquid crystal materials, characterized here by their elastic constants, exhibit clearly different behavior from each other.